Chapter Thirteen
Katie stretched up on her toes, trying to reach the very highest shelf in the mercantile’s storeroom. She’d spent every minute of the past seven mornings, excepting Sunday, among the shelves and boxes.
She’d nearly finished organizing the storeroom. A week of carrying boxes and cans and heavy bags across the room, pulling them off shelves only to lift them onto others, had left her sore and tired. She’d taken the chaos she’d found in the storage room and created structure. Mr. Johnson would know in a glance what was there, how much, where to find it. ’Twas an enormous improvement.
She slid a box off the highest shelf. It was lighter than she expected, but awkward coming from as high up as it was. The stepladder teetered once as she climbed back down. She set the box on the ground and pulled it open.
Handkerchiefs. The pile out front was down to three.
Katie tucked the box under her arm and stepped out of the storage room. The mercantile was empty, just as it had been most of the week she’d worked there. Harvest kept the residents of Hope Springs busy and away from town.
“What are you doing out here?” Mr. Johnson skewered her with an accusatory look. “Get in the back where you belong.”
“I’m only—”
His livid expression stopped her on the spot. Mr. Johnson only permitted her to speak in whispers. Her accent, she’d been told many times over the last week, made “his ears bleed.”
“I’m putting out the handkerchiefs.” She kept the words barely audible. “There are but three remaining in the display.”
“But tree remaining?” He mimicked her pronunciation with an obvious desire to offend.
Katie kept still and quiet.
“Fine. But be quick about it.” He returned to his ledgers.
She crossed to the long table where the Johnsons displayed gloves and scarves and handkerchiefs. She laid her box on the table and pulled out one square of linen at a time, setting each out very precisely. Not a single handkerchief was so much as a hair’s breadth farther to one side or the other than the one before it.
Mr. Johnson was very particular about everything she did. She’d spent a full hour arranging a display of shiny leather boots the morning before, only to have him topple them over because one of the rows wasn’t as straight as he wanted it to be. Just that morning he’d kicked over her bucket of mop water for missing a bit of dirt.
The door chime sounded. Katie looked up from her work and straight to Mr. Johnson. She wasn’t supposed to be out when customers came around. But there was no way of returning to the storage room without passing by the new arrival.
Mr. Johnson jabbed his finger in her direction. “Not a word. Keep to the corner.”
Katie nodded. The last thing she wanted was trouble. She returned to laying out the handkerchiefs. Surely the table sat far enough in the corner to satisfy Mr. Johnson’s edict.
“Have you come by for a treat?” Mr. Johnson said to his customer.
Katie kept her head down and her hands moving. She’d had an employer very much like Mr. Johnson before. Her first job in Derry had been filled with beatings and angry, insulting words. She’d learned then to work hard and keep out of the way. She flexed her fingers as she stood in the corner of the mercantile. Her first mistress had beaten her hands so many times for the smallest things that she still bore the scars.
At least Mr. Johnson hasn’t resorted to that. She was belittled and yelled at but hadn’t yet been beaten.
“Katie?”
She knew that voice in an instant. Emma.
The sweet child stood at the display of candies, smiling across at her. Was she the customer who’d come inside? A happy surprise, that.
Katie pressed her lips together to keep from calling out a greeting. She did, however, give the tiniest wave of her fingers and a smile she hoped communicated her very real pleasure at seeing Emma again.
Emma’s face lit up. She came to the corner where Katie was working.
“Hello, Katie.”
“Hello, sweetheart.” She kept her voice quiet. “What brings you to the mercantile? Are you here on your own?”
She couldn’t imagine Joseph would leave Emma to fend for herself.
“Papa came to get me from school and gave me a penny for a sweet.” She held her hand open, palm up, with a single bronze coin lying there. “He said I could pick whatever candy I wanted.”
Katie smiled. “A butterscotch, I’d wager.”
“You remembered.” Emma actually seemed surprised by that.
“Butterscotch sweets. Chocolate cake. Potato-and-leek soup.” Katie counted off the items on her fingers. “I think I remember most of your favorites.”
“When will you come see us again? We never found the tune I liked.”
Emma had overheard her playing her fiddle one night and became particularly attached to a tune she’d played. Though Katie had spent many evenings playing through the tunes she knew, they hadn’t yet found the one Emma wished to hear again.
“Perhaps your papa will let you come visit me at my new house and we can have a wee little céilí of our own.”
“I told you I won’t have you using any of your asinine Irish words in this shop.”
Katie hadn’t even heard Mr. Johnson approach. She looked quickly at Emma. The girl was sensitive. Had Mr. Johnson’s angry tone upset her? But Emma looked more confused than upset.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Johnson. I’ll—”
He stopped her short with the same look of warning she received every time she spoke. He stood there glaring at her, a small box under his arm.
Katie bent lower, so she could speak to Emma while keeping her voice low. “Go pick out your sweet.”
Emma nodded, her eyes darting between Katie and Mr. Johnson. She moved slowly back toward the candy display, glancing repeatedly over her shoulder as she went.
“I told you not to talk to the customers. If you can’t follow simple instructions—”
“She came and spoke to me. I kept to the corner just like you told me to.”
Though Katie thought her reasoning was sound, Mr. Johnson didn’t seem satisfied. His lips all but disappeared as his mouth narrowed.
He slammed his small box on the table. “What is this?”
She glanced inside. “Ribbons, Mr. Johnson.”
“And who put the ribbons in this box?”
“I did, sir.”
“Why would you put ribbons in a box that is clearly labeled ‘laces’? Are you trying to sabotage my business? Make me look like a fool?”
Heat flamed across Katie’s face even as her stomach dropped to her shoes. She’d seen the lettering on the front of the box and, looking inside to find a single spool of ribbon, had assumed the word was “ribbon.”
“I’m not meaning to make you look foolish at all, I assure you. I’d not meant to place the ribbons in the wrong container.”
His eyes were hard and disbelieving. “You ‘didn’t mean’ to put ribbons in the lace box? Are you a simpleton, then? You can’t understand that lace goes in the lace box and ribbons in the ribbon box?”
“I am not stupid.” She spoke quietly but firmly.
“You’re either stupid or playing me for a fool.” He snatched up the box and tipped it upside down, dumping the rolls of ribbon on the floor. “Put the ribbon in the ribbon box and the lace in this one. Are those instructions simple enough, or do I need to use smaller words?”
Katie lowered her eyes, a position beaten into a servant until it became an instinct as deeply rooted as breathing itself. “I don’t know where the ribbon box is, sir.” She had thought the box now sitting upturned on the table was the ribbon box.
“It is on the display shelves where this one was. Everything is labeled. This should be simple.”
Katie clasped her hands in front of her. She kept her head down. “I can’t read the labels, sir. I’ve been looking inside the boxes to see what goes where.”
“Are you commenting on my wife’s handwriting?” Was the man determined to be offended by everything she said? “She has fine penmanship.”
“Aye. I’m certain she does.”
“Do not say ‘aye.’ If you can’t speak proper English, you’ll be out on the street quick as lightning.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now get back to work.” He pushed a spool of ribbon toward her with the toe of his shoe. “And do it right this time.”
“Yes, sir.”
He grumbled as he walked off. Katie stood in frustrated silence. After all she’d accomplished in the storeroom—she hadn’t taken anything out of their boxes, so she knew she hadn’t misunderstood any labeling there—and the fine displays she’d created out in the shop, she was rebuked over a box of ribbons. Are you a simpleton? She could endure his complaints about her work, but she hated being treated as though she were stupid.
Emma was not at the candy display. Apparently she’d made her purchase and slipped out quietly. Katie hadn’t even heard the door chime.
She bent down to gather up the ribbons. ’Twas an unfortunate thing Mr. Johnson had taken the “lace” box back with him. Keeping all the spools in her arms without any spilling over would be a juggling act.
Katie piled them one by one into her arms, the stack nearly reaching her chin. She stood awkwardly, trying to keep the ribbons balanced. Mr. Johnson had disturbed her nearly perfect arrangement of handkerchiefs. She’d have to return to fix that, but he seemed more concerned with the ribbons at the moment.
She managed to carry her unstable load all the way to the tall shelves where sat boxes and baskets of smaller goods. Buttons, ribbons, thread, needles, and other sewing notions. Every container was labeled in letters she could not read. It seemed the boxes were in as desperate a state of disarray as the rest of the mercantile. She ought not to have assumed the contents and the labels matched.
A few spools slid from her grasp.
“Your job is to clean, not make a mess.” Mr. Johnson spoke without even looking up at her.
“Yes, sir.”
“And keep quiet. I don’t want to hear your voice the rest of the day.”
She set the spools in a small pile at the base of the shelves.
Silence for the rest of the day? That shouldn’t be hard. She hadn’t been much of a talker before coming to Hope Springs. Keeping quiet had simply been part of being a servant. Joseph had spoiled her for that. He talked to her and encouraged her to keep up the conversation. She was treated with kindness. She’d almost forgotten that was not normal.
She looked over the boxes and baskets and realized she had something of a puzzle staring at her. She was to put the ribbons in their correct box, but she couldn’t read a single word. She didn’t know which box she was looking for. And she was not supposed to talk.
How do I get around this difficulty, Eimear?
She couldn’t simply look inside all the boxes. That method had put her in this difficulty in the first place. She would simply have to ask.
“Mr. Johnson, I—”
“I said no more talking.”
“I don’t know where to put the ribbon.”
His head jerked up, eyes snapping with annoyance. “In the ribbon box.” He spoke slowly.
Katie held herself perfectly still, enduring the barb without so much as a wince. This was old, familiar territory. “Which is the—?”
“Read the labels, you half-wit.”
The word struck her like a slap. Half-wit. Confessing she couldn’t read would convince him of that even more. Perhaps he was right. But she couldn’t do her work properly if he didn’t read the labels for her.
Pride was a fickle companion. It seldom improved a situation.
“I cannot read, sir. Not a word.”
His first look was one of surprise. “Can’t read? Why, even that child who just left can read. My own little Marianne can read.”
She might have defended herself with arguments over opportunities and education, but the words died unspoken. She stood in silence, as she’d been ordered to.
“No wonder your people are such a plague.” Mr. Johnson turned back to his papers.
“If you’ll but tell me where to put the ribbons, Mr. Johnson.”
He slowly turned his head toward the shelves. “Third shelf from the top, second basket from the right. Or can’t you count either?”
She let the insult pass and set back to her work. She need only endure a little while longer, then she could return to the peace and quiet of Granny’s house. That would become her daily routine, she imagined.
The door chimed once again. Another customer.
Katie spoke without looking back. “Do you want me to step into the storage room?”
“I want you to shut up.”
She closed her eyes and her heart to his words. If she let him wound her, she would eventually die inside.
“I told you, Papa. There she is.”
Hearing Emma’s voice pulled Katie around. Sure enough, there the child stood with her father at her side, both looking at Katie.
“What can I do for you, Joseph?” Mr. Johnson spoke respectfully, with deference and consideration.
She stood at the shelves, too embarrassed to flee and too afraid she’d lose her position if she even attempted to explain.
Joseph’s gaze traveled between her and Mr. Johnson. His expression had often been unreadable in the first weeks she’d known him. In the months that had followed, she thought she’d come to understand him better. But she couldn’t say at all what he was thinking.
“Emma came for a butterscotch.” Though Joseph spoke without the slightest hint of a question, Katie sensed something hovering beneath the surface of his words.
“Of course.” Mr. Johnson moved quickly around the counter to join Joseph and Emma at the candy jars. “I hoped you would come back and pick out your sweet.”
Katie faced the shelves. She pulled down the third-down-second-over box. Kneeling on the floor, she set the ribbon spools neatly inside, organizing them by color. Mr. Johnson could not with any degree of honesty complain about how hard she worked. He likely would complain, but the complaints wouldn’t be warranted.
She slid the box, now nearly full, back into its place on the shelf. As she turned to slip into the back room, she found Joseph standing directly beside her.
She opened her mouth to say hello but closed it again immediately. She didn’t want to endure another scolding. All she needed to do was finish out her morning. If she could manage that without being yelled at again, she might not spend her walk home fighting tears of exhaustion and humiliation.
“Emma said Mr. Johnson called you a simpleton.”
She glanced at Mr. Johnson. Though he stood near Emma as she looked at the sweets display, his eyes were on Katie and Joseph. She wasn’t supposed to talk. She looked back at Joseph, silently pleading with him not to press her for an answer.
He proved very uncooperative. “She also told me he was yelling at you and threw a box of ribbons at your head.”
She just shook her head no, keeping her lips tightly closed.
Tavish, of all people, spoke next. “I’d wager Miss Emma had the right of it.”
Katie spun about. Tavish stood at the counter, looking over the lot of them with a confused lift of one ebony eyebrow. Katie hadn’t even heard the door chime.
“Have you sunk so low as to throw things at women’s heads?” Tavish spoke to Mr. Johnson, though his eyes darted back to her more than once.
“No. At Irish heads, and only the insufferably incompetent ones.”
Katie made to move to the storage room, away from his complaints and out of sight of Joseph and Tavish, but Joseph took hold of her hand. His gaze hadn’t left her face. His earlier question still lingered in his expression. What is going on?
Mr. Johnson caught her eye. “Not one word, Paddy,” he muttered. He stood with his arms folded across his chest. At least he wasn’t flashing that feigned smile he so often wore for the Irish. That smile always made her feel uneasy.
She couldn’t bring herself to even look at the two men. She hoped Emma wasn’t too upset by the confrontation.
Mr. Johnson yanked the door to the storage room open and nodded for her to step inside. “You can work in here for the rest of the day.”
She gave a quick nod of her head, pulled her hand away from Joseph’s, and stepped inside.
“Don’t ever forget,” Mr. Johnson spat at her as she passed, “I could have driven every last one of you out of here. Without clothes or food, this Irish scourge would have been gone for good, and y’all would have run straight back to where you came from.”
He snapped the door shut. Whatever conversation or confrontation took place in the shop, she was not privy to it. She stood in the storage room for several long moments without moving, simply attempting to reassure herself that all would be well in time. But the peace she looked for, the sense of calm contentment, didn’t come. She didn’t believe in second sight or premonitions, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the path ahead of her was anything but smooth.